Officials are working to reverse a long-standing trend of marquee companies listing overseas

BEIJING—China’s government wants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and other Chinese tech giants listed abroad to trade on the nation’s stock markets. Now regulators are trying to figure out how to do that without seeing those shares fall too low or soar too high.

Officials at the country’s securities regulator and its two main stock exchanges are racing to issue China’s first class of securities known as depositary receipts and are facing pressure to get the details right, according to people familiar with the deliberations. The...